Incoming Fellow Dr Batuhan Özdemir (Durham University) will focus on publishing key findings from his research on Charles Fellows’s Lycian Collection in the British Museum.
Batuhan is an archaeologist interested in the history of collecting and the politics of cultural heritage in the Ottoman Mediterranean, particularly regarding Lycian cultural identity and how this was framed through material culture in Victorian imperial and cultural discourses. He received a PhD in Archaeology from Durham University with a thesis entitled Framing Charles Fellows’s Lycian Collection in the British Museum: Geopolitics and Cultural Identities in the 19th Century, in which he offered a nuanced synthesis and in-depth analysis of how the acquisition of the Lycian ‘marbles’ by the British Museum intersected with pivotal socio-political developments in the 19th century.
During his fellowship at the BIAA and Bilkent University, Batuhan will publish parts of his doctoral research as articles and extend this work by investigating how the Trustees of the British Museum, the Foreign Office, the British Ambassador in Constantinople, and Charles Fellows collaborated to devise diplomatic strategies to obtain a firman from the Ottoman Porte permitting the removal of antiquities from Lycia. In addition, he will examine how British collecting practices were formed during two military-backed expeditions to Lycia, and how these operations reflected Britain’s interests in the Ottoman Mediterranean while marking an early shift from antiquarianism to emerging archaeological practices in the first half of the nineteenth century. He also plans to organise a workshop on collecting at the BIAA in spring 2026.
Batuhan will join second-year BIAA-Bilkent Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Elif Neyzi.
This postdoctoral fellowship was first established in 2024 as a joint initiative between the BIAA and Bilkent University to support a UK Higher Education Institution-affiliated postdoctoral scholar to undertake 12 months’ research on any topic within the arts, humanities, and social sciences that aligns with the BIAA’s Strategic Research Initiatives and focuses on Türkiye and/or the Black Sea region. The fellowship is based at the BIAA’s research centre in Ankara and the relevant department within Bilkent University.